How did I forget about this song?

Jun 26, 2023 11:01 am

Hi folks...HAPPY MONDAY!!!

JON COLE here and I'm thrilled you're here too! 😊

*(Don't miss my "JON COLE PRIMER"

below for access to a few unreleased songs)

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THROWBACK JAM OF THE WEEK

"Outstanding" by The Gap Band

I'm gonna be honest...I forgot about this song entirely until I heard some of my friends play it on a local gig and absolutely smash the living daylight out of it!

Everyone in the room was zoned in and standing still didn't seem to be an option.

It's currently on repeat in my earbuds...check it out!

🎧LISTEN HERE!

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WHAT I’M WORKING ON

Someone said that with any given project, the last 10% is as difficult as the first 90%...that's where I'm at with my next single, "Puerto Rican Blue".

I'm very proud of the songwriting, and of the arrangement such as it is.

I think of pop music at it's best as a bastard...there's no room for musical purism. You mix influences freely and only what feels right and sounds good makes the cut.

Written for my fiance, Heidi, "Puerto Rican Blue" is meant to sound the way the title feels - the root groove is chiefly Latin blended with R&B & jazz.

I can't wait for you to hear it.

*(See below for a preview of the lyrics) 😊

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Babyface On NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert Series

Look...let me just say that unless you're a very, very die-hard Babyface fan you're probably going to listen to this and find out that he either wrote or produced more of your favorite songs that you knew!

Band = 🔥

Background singers = 🔥🔥

Songs = 🔥🔥🔥

1000% Worth Your Time...

🎧LISTEN HERE!

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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Getting a bit better at recording videos, with a plan to become great at it and bring you more and more high quality content. Thanks so much for listening along the way!

SEE THE IG POST 👀

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YOU SHOULD HEAR THIS...

Tony Bennett is not famous for singing the blues.

And some of you will listen to and come away from this album under the same impression you had before...that Tony Bennett is best thought of as a crooner known for his sentimental renditions of standards from the great American songbook...

...But make no mistake - this album is an exploration of the blues - it's musical form and emotional essence.

Backed by an exceptionally tasteful small jazz ensemble, "Playing With My Friends" features Bennett and guests duetting on blues standards (mostly).

It's true that the album is neither played nor sung in the "low spirits" which author and blues-music apologist Albert Murray describes as synonymous with the "blues as such".

But reading further in Murray's exceptional treatise on blues music entitled "Stomping The Blues" we find a new filter through which to hear the optimistic undertones on display in this great album of Tony Bennett's...

Murray notes that...

"With all its [blues musics] preoccupation with the most disturbing aspects of life, it is something contrived specifically to be performed as entertainment. Not only is its express purpose to make people feel good, which is to say in high spirits, but in the process of doing so it is actually expected to generate a disposition that is both elegantly playful and heroic in it's nonchalance".

There is still a reverence on display here, reflected in the vulnerability implied by the choice of the small ensemble as accompaniment - a risk so rarely taken on by the great pop singers of Bennett's time and genre.

Listen to this album and see if you can't easily imagine what it was that compelled Frank Sinatra to extol his contemporary and colleague (Bennett) as "the best goddamn pop singer I ever heard!"

🎧LISTEN HERE

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